Electronic Flight Bag

[rfresh737 36]

Electronic Flight Bag coming soon...to a cockpit near you...!!!

 

http://www.SimChecklist.net/Dash8Q400EFB.jpg

[daan_vb 37]

What exactly is this? Any more inforamtion, it looks very interesting! Is this something you're making Ralph?

[Dean33 69]

It's already available as part of SimChecklist with 30 day trial. There's a video demo too.

It's good.

Dean

[rfresh737 36]

Yes I'm the developer of SimChecklist and I recently added a feature to allow it to manage approach plates for the CS 777 Sim product using their EFB which the 777 has.

 

When I posted my YouTube tutorial on how it works I received a lot of emails asking if I could develop one for use in any sim cockpit.

 

So I created a generic EFB with many more features since I have more control.

 

I'm about to release version 4.2 which will add more content support. I will do a video on that very soon.

 

Then I will start on the 3rd EFB phase which will add built-in 3rd party app support such as Plan G3 which will display it's moving map on the EFB screen!

[dbw1 446]

Is this available now or is it a work in progress? It looks Interesting.

Dave

[rfresh737 36]

Phase I is available now. I'm releasing the generic EFB in three phases:

 

Phase 1 - Release Candidate (RC) 4.1 is out now on my download website at www.SimChecklist.net. Phase 1 implements PDF content. I did this first because the CS 777 EFB doesn't support a PDF reader inside their EFB. Approach plates have to be in image format. This is OK but if you try to zoom in you lose some sharpness.

 

Since I didn't have access to their code, my hands were somewhat tied in making my IFR Approach Plate interface work with their 777 EFB. They do have some good flexibility which allowed me some room to make my EFB design work with their product.

 

However, there was nothing I could do about them not supporting a PDF reader. I wanted a PDF reader because when you zoom you don't lose your sharpness. This is more critical for IFR Enroute Charts because they are so big and as an image, you can't zoom in too much. As a PDF (from the FAA website) you can zoom in all you like and still keep it sharp as a tack.

 

Thus, when I decided to write my own generic Electronic Flight Bag add-on to my SimChecklist app, I had a blank canvas. So the first thing I did was add a PDF reader for the IFR plates. So, RC 4.1 can read any PDF content and, at this time, only PDF content. Turns out getting a PDF reader component inside a windows app is extremely expensive, so I went with using the Adobe Reader engine, which is free. What this means is that you must have the Adobe reader installed on your windows machine in order for my EFB to render PDF files.

 

RC 4.2 which I am about to release, adds 3 more data content types: Images, Rich Text Format (rtf) and plain text files. In addition, I have built an editor inside the EFB so it will now be easier to create RTF and Text documents right inside the EFB and I will do a video tutorial on this wonderful feature. It turned out terrific, especially for RTF documents.

 

So, phase 2 is the RC 4.2 which is almost finished. I should be releasing this weekend. Watch the download website page for RC 4.2.

 

Phase 3 will most likely get released in Jan 2015 and that will support 3rd party window apps such as moving map displays that you can suck inside the EFB and display!

 

The generic EFB can be used 'on top' of any flight simulator. I fly the 737NGX, which doesn't have its own EFB, but now I have one for it...!!!

[rfresh737 36]

I just released ver 4.2 for the Electronic Flight Bag...I added three content types: Rich Text Format (RTF), TXT docs and Images. The RTF is the most important addition of these. This took longer that I thought because once I got into it, I saw the value of being able to create/edit RTF/TXT content right inside the EFB screen, so I decided to build an editor inside it with a pop-up editing menu. Turned out pretty nice I think.

 

I'm going to rest for a short while then start in on the 3rd phase of the EFB: 3rd party application support. You'll be able to suck in any app that is running when you start SCL and suck it into the EFB screen to actually have it continue to run. I've been told that some of the GA simmers have moving maps and would like this capability inside their cockpits.

 

My 737NGX YouTube Channel has two video tutorials I just made covering the 4.2 additions: https://www.youtube.com/user/rfresh1011

[rfresh737 36]

I just finished ver 4.3...this is the third and final release phase for the EFB. Ver 4.3 added support to run 3rd party apps such as Plan G with its moving map display right inside the EFB screen.

 

Now i will finish the Dash8 Q400 Fuel Planning window which will be ver 4.4. I should be releasing this in about a week or two.